


One little victory

by chetoos



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:15:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3283328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chetoos/pseuds/chetoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy's life is full of these. Even when she manages to beat the big bad for the year, next year always overshadows the last one. At the end of her sixth year in Sunnydale, she manages to avoid getting shot by Warren, but Xander and Tara don't share her luck. Stopping Willow before she can begin, she needs the help of all her friends to keep going, and she might soon see Willow as more than a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One little victory

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one takes place at the end of season 6, episode 20, where Tara was shot by Warren. The first chapter is merely setting the stage for things to come, and as such, Buffy and Willow do not get together just yet. If any chapters skip episodes, it can be assumed the episodes were unaffected by the universe change. Additionally, Tara still dies, so I don't know if that counts for "major character death" tag, when she dies in the show. Finally, later chapters, once Buffy and Willow actually get together, will include lesbian sex scenes. Just thought I'd put that warning in here, instead of rating, because the rating doesn't apply to all chapters.

A terrible week for Buffy, culminating in a rape attempt from Spike, at least ended with one little victory against Warren. She thought that, until he showed up in her backyard, packing heat. “You think you can do that to me and get away with it?” He accuses and fires wildly, afraid of recrimination from the Slayer. Unfortunately, he hits two people dead on. Xander is lying on the ground, seriously wounded, while upstairs Tara lies dead. Buffy recognizes the wound and runs upstairs for Willow, having seen the other bullet shatter glass in what used to be her mother’s bedroom. As she runs in, Willow is chanting, attempting to summon Osiris.

 

“Willow, Xander’s…” Buffy’s words stop in her mouth as she sees Tara’s lifeless body, but the mention of Willow’s childhood friend is enough to get the witch’s attention, stopping the chant.

 

“I can’t help both of them out, Buffy,” Willow says, clearly trying to bargain, giving back in to dark magics.

 

“Tara’s gone, I’m sorry, but she can’t be helped. I did some reading on those kind of spells, they can only help when the death’s not done by humans. Now come on, Xander’s hurt, and you  can help him.”

 

Willow nods, teary eyed and walks slowly out of the room, her hand staying in Tara’s for as long as possible. Once out of the room, though, she speeds up, just enough to reach Xander not too long after Buffy. Once she sees the wound, she focuses on healing magics, before asking Buffy, “Are you sure I should be doing this? Can’t the paramedics…”

 

“I got Dawn to call them, but he’s hurt bad, he needs something to hold him until they get here,” the Slayer responds, crouched next to the bleeding carpenter.

 

Willow nods once before focusing on mending the wound. It is a deep one, but she manages to patch it enough that Xander keeps around until the paramedics arrive. Buffy and Willow follow the ambulance in Xander’s car.

 

The silence pervading the car sits for a while until Willow breaks it, “Th-thanks for coming up to get me, Buffy, I don’t know what I would have done if…”

 

Buffy, sensing that her friend needs emotional support, smiles. “Hey, don’t mention it. If you hadn’t come down, I don’t think Xander would have made it to the ambulance, and he was talking about how he wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have us. I don’t want to think about that, or how we’d do if we didn’t have him…”

 

“You’re right, I don’t want… I mean, it would be terrible to…”

 

“I understand. Tara… you wish you could have done something, but… sometimes, life just…”

 

“Who did that?” Willow asks. “You said the resurrection spell couldn’t be used on human caused deaths…”

 

Buffy hesitates for a moment, before deciding that her friend needed to know who caused Tara’s death. “It was Warren. I beat him last night by smashing his orbs, and I guess he got a gun and decided to come hunting. I managed to dodge, and I thought I hit Xander out of the way, but… He was waving it pretty frantically.”

 

Willow smiled a bit and nodded. “I’m glad you’re safe. I probably would have gone nuts if you hadn’t gotten me.”

 

Buffy smiled, seeing her friend happy, but she didn’t want to keep Willow’s mind on that. “Have you seen Dawn’s grades recently? She’s been doing better. I think it’s because the high school isn’t on a hellmouth anymore.”

 

“Oh god, how much of your academic trouble was because of that, do you think?,” Willow chuckled, before returning to her previous somber state. Buffy put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

 

“Hey, it’ll be alright, Wil, we’ll make it through this. I mean, when my mom died…”

 

The silence returns, until they reach the hospital, but Willow feels better about the future. Xander is in surgery for a few hours, but the doctors manage to get everything out of him and seal up his wound. He’s left overnight to heal, so the girls go pick up Dawn and head to the Magic Box to plan their next move.

 

“Not that I don’t mind company, why are you two here, instead of at your house, Buffy?” Anya asks. “I mean, you have copies of everything here, and some things that aren’t.”

 

Willow grips her book tighter and Buffy turns around. “We just don’t want to be there right now, it’s… not a great place for Willow to be right now.”

 

“Tara got shot… We’re just trying to avoid it right now,” Dawn pipes up, which causes Willow to start crying, dropping the book she was holding. Anya’s eyes go wide, and Dawn gets a look on her face that conveys how much she didn’t mean to say that, but Buffy doesn’t see it as she hugs her witch friend.

 

“Who did that? Was it a man? I’m still a vengeance demon, if you want me to-”

 

“We’d prefer to handle this on our own,” Buffy responds, cutting Anya off from saying anything else, keeping the hug around Willow until the redhaired girl lets go.

 

“Besides,” Willow says, her voice rife with evidence of her crying, “I want to get back at him myself.”

 

“Hey, we’re not doing anything like that, we’re going to turn him over to the authorities,” Buffy reminds Willow.

 

The redhaired witch sighs and loosens her grip on the book. Her eyes had started to go dark before Buffy brought her back down. “You’re right, we can’t start deciding which people to kill.”

 

“Even if it would feel good to take Warren down like you did Adam,” Dawn mutters under her breath, which causes Buffy to turn to her younger sister, giving a death glare that would take down a Fyarl demon. Dawn made a small sound and retreated behind her book, trying to escape the Slayer’s gaze.

 

“That wouldn’t work anyway, because Giles isn’t here, and Xander…” Anya trails off after the name of her former fiance passes her lips. “Is he alright?”

 

“Giles? Last thing I heard he was trying to keep the watcher’s council from sending another watcher for me,” Buffy responded.

 

“No, Xander,” Anya said. “I know he was shot, but you two didn’t talk about anything else from when that happened, and that has me worried.”

 

“He’s fine,” Willow said, her voice soft, trying to retain her composure. “He was taken by the paramedics, and they’re letting him rest at the hospital. We aren’t allowed in his room yet, so…”

 

“When you are, can you… can you tell him I’m sorry? Spike was a moment of weakness, and I want to make sure that he understands that.”

 

Buffy smiles and nods. “Of course, we’ll let him know. You can come along, if you want.”

 

“Oh, no, I’m… I’ve got work here, and I’m still a vengeance demon, so…” Anya tries to make excuses for herself. Buffy nods and goes back to researching.

 

Suddenly, Dawn pokes her head out of the book it had been buried under since her sister’s glare. “Uh, what are we looking for again? I’ve just been reading the same paragraph of a witch’s dance magic for about fifteen minutes.”

 

Buffy sighed, but answered. “We’re trying to figure out some way to track Warren. Willow tried a standard locator spell, but he must have shielded his location, because it kept flipping around, so we’re looking for other ways to track him.”

 

“And it must have been a good cover, because I learned the locator spell from Tara, and it…” Willow drops her book and starts to cry into her arm. Buffy embraces her friend and hugs her, before turning to Dawn.

 

“The point is, it’s a good coverup on the part of Warren, so we need a good counter for it,” the Slayer explained, hugging Willow until the witch smiled at Buffy, indicating that she was good for now.

 

Anya leans back on the counter. “Well, I still have Halfrek’s locator crystals in the back, and they haven’t come up with a spell that counters vengeance demon locator spells yet,” Anya explains and Buffy looks at Willow, who nods and stands. “Alright, let’s find him,” she says, teeth grit, anger in her voice.

 

The four of them walk into the back of the Magic Box, where Anya prepares the locator crystals, a group of six perfectly shaped cylindrical blue crystals, over the map of Sunnydale. They stare at it for about a minute before Dawn speaks up.

 

“Uh, is that supposed to happen?”

 

“Oh, right, you can’t use these unless you’re on official vengeance business,” Anya explains.

 

“Well, that works,” Dawn says, “I wish you would help us bring Warren to justice.”

 

“You know not to make wishes too often, though, right?” Buffy asks Dawn, and she nods as Anya mulls over the wish.

 

“I guess that’ll work,” she says, and the crystals light up, standing up on their points. “Find me Warren Mears,” she commands the six crystals, and they begin to wiggle, coming together to form a circle with their inner points. The crystals then spin slightly as they move around the map, settling on a point.

 

“Alright, he’s there, so we can…” Anya is cut off as the crystals move again, locating another spot, then another.

 

“Wh-what does that mean?” Willow asks, watching the crystals spin around and around all over the map.

 

“Usually it only does this when you’re looking for someone who has a name that is really common, so like two John Smiths, but…” Anya is at a loss, when Buffy shakes her head and speaks up.

 

“He’s trying to throw us off his trail. He made a bunch of Warren bots, and since they’re all named Warren Mears, it’s finding each of them. Willow, do you think you can do a scrying spell on each of the locations?”

 

“Y-yeah, the magic should be simple enough that it shouldn’t affect me,” she says and goes to prepare the ingredients while Dawn notes down where each Warren or Warren-bot is.

 

The next couple of hours pass, but the tension in the air is very high as Willow looks at each location where a Warren is, casting a spell on the image to highlight all humans in it, and moving onto the next one when a location proves to be Warren-less. After about eight, the magic begins to overtake her, so Buffy pulls Willow aside and has her rest for a bit, so as to not succumb to the magic like she had earlier in the year. Finally, they look on one place that doesn’t even appear to have a Warren in it, but when using the human highlighting spell, shows an outline in a seemingly empty spot.

 

“We got him,” Willow says, starting to sound light headed from all the magic she is slinging around, and Dawn looks at where the location they are scrying is.

 

“The mall? I guess he figures to hide a tree, you need to use a forest. Anya, have the crystals track that Warren, and call us if he leaves the mall,” Buffy says right before a call comes to the Magic Box phone. Dawn picks it up and answers it before calling to the back room.

 

“Hey, Buffy, it’s Xander for you,” she says as Buffy gets up and goes to the front room, taking the phone from her sister.

 

“Hey Buff, the doctors said I was good enough for a visitor for a bit, so I was wondering, if you and Wil weren’t too busy catching Warren…”

 

Buffy looked at the map, marking Warren at the mall, and at Willow, who still looked shaky from losing Tara. “We’ll be right over,” she told him. “Do you wanna talk to Willow?”

 

“Nah, I’ll save that for when you guys get here. Now come on, they say I can only have visitors for so long,” he said before hanging up the phone.

 

“Anya, keep track of that Warren. He’s hidden from scrying spells, but the map seems to work on him, so track just that Warren,” Buffy tells the demon and looks to Willow. “Come on, Xander wants to see us.”

 

Willow nods, blinking away tears she hadn’t noticed were there before Dawn speaks up.

 

“Ooh, can I come with too?”

 

“If it’s ok with Willow, this is kind of a scooby founders thing,” Buffy answers, but Willow nods.

 

“Yeah, she can come with, I don’t see why not,” Willow says softly, still on the verge of breaking down. Sensing the emotional problems bubbling up, Buffy hugs her friend.

 

“Hey, it’ll be alright. Xander’s doing better, and we’ll catch Warren and turn him over to the cops,” Buffy reassures Willow, who nods, crying silently a bit into Buffy’s shoulder before putting on a tough face and nodding.

 

“Alright, let’s go,” she says, and the three girls walk out of the store to Willow’s nearby car.

 

Xander’s hospital room is austere, the same as the room Willow had been in when she helped put Angel’s soul back after he had turned into Angelus. The carpenter smiles when he sees Buffy, Willow, and Dawn enter the room. “Hey ladies, what’s happening? I hear I have Wil to thank for being here,” he says and Willow smiles and nods a bit. “Hey, what’s going on? Why the long face, Wil?”

 

Buffy and Dawn look at Willow, who looks on the verge of breaking down again, but she closes her eyes and speaks up. “Tara… she… didn’t make it,” Willow says and Xander’s smile just stops.

 

“Wait, Warren… You mean he… I didn’t realize, I’m so sorry, Wil,” Xander looks up at Willow. “I’d give you a hug, but the doctors say that I can’t move too much just yet.”

 

Buffy speaks up, putting a hand on Willow’s shoulder, and Willow puts her hand on top of Buffy’s. “We’re looking for him now, and we were going to go after him, but then you called.”

 

“Well don’t let me stop you, I’ll still be here after Warren’s behind bars, probably. I mean, they said I need to be here for another day at least,” Xander says and smiles. “Wil, you’ll make it through this. You’re strong, OK?”

 

Willow nods and closes her eyes for a few seconds before Buffy’s phone goes off. “That’s probably Anya, updating us on Warren’s location,” Buffy says as she answers it. “Hey Anya, where is he?”

 

“He’s at a warehouse on the south side of the city, it looks like the Warren bots are converging there too,” Anya responds, and Buffy nods.

 

“Alright Xander, sorry we can’t stay longer, but Warren’s moving to a new location, and I wanna get the drop on him,” Buffy says and Xander nods.

 

“I understand. Give him one for me, Wil,” Xander says, causing Willow to smirk. “Hey, I got a smirk. I’ll take it.”

 

The directions were texted to Buffy’s phone, and Dawn, looking over, noticed where they were going. “Hey, isn’t that the warehouse that Ethan Rayne used to make the chocolate that made Mom and Giles kiss?”

 

“How do you remember that?” Buffy asked, looking incredulously at her sister.

 

“I’ve been keeping track of your adventures for a while. Also, you dragged me there, since Mom couldn’t watch me.”

 

“Well, as long as that’s all you remember about that night,” Buffy stated as she walked out of the hospital room, flanked by Dawn and Willow. The three of them walked back down to Willow’s car, where they got in, prepared to go to the warehouse. Buffy pulled a sword out of a compartment in the car.

 

“Do you really think you’re gonna need that?” Willow asked, hesitantly.

 

“Anya said that the Warrenbots were converging, I need something to defend myself with. Willow, you stay at the car with Dawn, park a couple buildings away, I can go in by myself.”

 

“But Buffy-” Dawn was cut off by a look back at her by the Slayer, and Dawn shrunk back into her seat, folding her arms dejectedly.

 

Once they reached the street, Buffy didn’t even bother opening the car, she just jumped out once she had unbuckled. Looking for possible alternate entrances to the warehouse, she spotted a high up window and jumped for it, crashing through the fragile pane of glass.

 

Landing in a circle of Warrenbots, Buffy wheeled around, trying to spot the real one, finding him on a higher level of the warehouse. “Didn’t want to face me yourself?” she taunted, grabbing a nearby pipe for a weapon.

 

“I just didn’t want to have to get my hands dirty if my robots could take you out,” he said, snapping his fingers. The signal caused the robots to shudder to life, causing them to attack Buffy. The first one to lunge at her got a pipe to the head. 

 

“Really? Because I think it’s more you’re afraid of me.” She flipped through the opening created by the temporarily downed robot and swung at the next one from below, causing it to fall backwards. 

 

“That’s what the Warrenbots are for. I didn’t have time to make them fully sentient, but they’re strong enough to take you down.” The next robot was smarter than the last two and caught the pipe. Dropping her impromptu weapon, Buffy stepped back and kicked it in the stomach, causing less of a pause than the pipe had. 

 

“ So they’re not as important to you,” she responded while jumping up and pushing the closest Warrenbot down with her flip as she moved back behind the knot of robots. “Tell you what, if you win, there should be some candy left in the back of this warehouse, you should go eat some of it. Also, ‘strong enough’? Strong enough is never strong enough to beat me.” Without the distraction of the robots, Buffy could have easily reached Warren and ended this, but the throng of Warrenbots stopped her from jumping up to the second level. 

 

“Don’t think you can get the upper hand with your pitiful gymnastics,” Warren taunted, pacing on the upper level. “These Warrenbots are a cut above the other robots I’ve made.” Buffy grabbed two shorter pipes from the nearby half-destroyed conveyor belt, bracing for the group of robots to rush at her.

 

“You mean the sex bots that you made for yourself and Spike? I should hope so, I could use something like that right now,” Buffy quipped, about to make a swing at the nearest bot when the door burst open.

 

“Get away from my sister!”

 

The shrill cry pierced the air, causing everyone to turn their heads, even the Warrenbots. The source of the cry, Dawn, swung a sword at the nearest robot, lopping off the arm that the blade made contact with.

 

“Dawn? I thought I told you to stay with Willow,” Buffy said, using her makeshift escrima sticks to bat away a couple of Warrenbots, damaging their heads in the process, but not slowing them too much.

 

“I did. She told me to grab a sword and we followed you after you left the car. She’s outside if you need her.” Dawn’s blade flashed again and chopped through a hand of another Warrenbot.

 

Buffy shook her head, jumping up to grip one of the Warrenbots with her thighs, spinning around it, causing it to crash to the ground. “We shouldn’t need her. When did you get so good at that?”

 

“What, you think I never watched you?” Dawn lopped off the damaged head of one of the Warrenbots that Buffy had injured with her pipes earlier. “Besides, I’m not gonna let some creep hurt you like this.”

 

Buffy smiled, a true smile, for the first time since she was brought back from Heaven. She had a reason to live again, and her sister had given that to her. Her pipes hit a Warrenbot in the legs, then Dawn’s sword came down on the back of its neck as it fell, cutting the cranium clean off, ending one more Warrenbot’s rampage. Looking up, Buffy noticed that Warren’s expression had changed, and he was now heading for the alternate end of the catwalks, trying to escape.

 

“I can handle the robots down here, you go up and make sure that Warren can’t escape,” Buffy told Dawn. She had seen Warren inching toward the exit after he saw his robots begin to fail. Dawn nodded and ran to the other end of the catwalk and flipped up the stairs. 

 

She was able to easily catch up to him and she made a few swings at Warren.

 

“If you think I’m gonna be taken down by the Slayer’s sister-” He stopped speaking the instant a blade was across his neck

 

“Say goodnight, bitch,” she proclaimed as she held the blade to him. “You’re gonna answer for what you did, first to Willow outside, then to the cops.”

 

By this point, the rest of the Warrenbots were laying on the ground, dismantled by blunt force trauma by a Buffy who felt like living for the first time in a long time.

 

“Oh come on, why do you all care so much about what I did? I didn’t even shoot Xander that bad,” Warren claimed as he struggled against Buffy’s strength, holding his arms behind his back.

 

“Let’s see, you did hurt him that bad, so Xander’s now in the hospital,” Buffy began.

 

“You sent that demon to the bank where Buffy was, and tried to have it kill her,” Dawn continued, the two sisters trading off listing Warren’s crime.

 

“You robbed a bank with a freeze ray and almost killed me when you made me invisible.”

 

“You made Buffy think she killed someone after brainwashing them.”

 

“You set that hallucination demon on me, and let’s not even get into that one.”

 

“And then there was your robbery of the amusement park with your super-orbs,” Dawn finished, just as they got outside, to a very angry Willow.

 

“And you shot my girlfriend. She’s dead now,” Willow said, trying her best to hold back emotions that would give away her vulnerable state now.

 

Warren’s eyes widened with the revelation that he had accidentally killed someone, and he slumped forward. “Just… just call the cops.”

 

“They’re on their way,” Willow said, going back to the car without another word.

 

Buffy noticed Willow’s posture shift when she began to walk, and asked Dawn to hold Warren. “If he gives you too much trouble, come get me. Otherwise, I think he’s learned his lesson for now.” Buffy followed Willow to the car and got in beside her friend. “Hey, what’s going on?”

 

“It’s just… Tara isn’t even buried yet, and we caught Warren, but…”

 

“You don’t know what to do with him. You want to hurt him, but you know you can’t. Not everything is about revenge. Sometimes, you just need to move on.”

 

At that moment, Dawn came running up to the car. “Warren got away, he ran south on the street, but I couldn’t catch up to him,” she proclaimed, but Buffy shook her head.

 

“We gave him a chance at prison. Now how much of a chance do you think he’ll get running into demon-infested Sunnydale?”

 

Willow sighed and nodded. “Alright, let’s go see Xander, tell him the good news.”

 

Willow noticed Buffy’s demeanor had changed on the way back to the hospital, seeming more free and more willing to give a smile, and the smiles were real again. This caused Willow to give her own smile as she drove. Tara would be grieved, but later. Now they were coming back from a hard fought battle, and she would allow herself to bask in the moment.

 

Once they arrived back at Sunnydale Memorial, Willow was surprised to find that someone else was already with Xander, as they didn’t expect Anya to be coming to see her former fiance. But who they saw when they reached the room surprised them.

 

“One of you gets shot, and it takes the one who got shot to call me over?” asked Buffy’s former watcher, arms crossed over his chest. Buffy, Dawn, and Willow rushed over to hug Giles, and he smiled and he placed his arms around the three women. “Honestly, I can’t believe you’ve slipped this much,” he snarked.

 

“Well, we were going to call you, but we needed to take out Warren first,” Buffy stated. “And Dawn here did that,” she proclaimed, smiling and slapping her sister on the back. Dawn winced from the hit, which was a bit stronger than Buffy had intended.

 

“Well, I mostly just got Warren, Buffy took out his army of robots,” Dawn humbly admitted.

 

“It would seem I trained two slayers, where I thought I had only trained one,” Giles joked, sitting down in a chair by the bed and taking off his glasses to clean them.

 

Meanwhile, Willow went over to sit by Xander. “Hey Wil, what’s up?” Xander asked Willow when she sat down.

 

Willow sighed and looked down at the ground. “I miss Tara…” She was about to say more, but Xander put a hand on her back.

 

“Hey, it’s alright to miss her. You loved her, it’s only natural. I’m just glad you don’t have to miss me. I think you probably need a vacation, give it time, then come back when you’re feeling better,” Xander offered, and Willow nodded, drying some tears that she hadn’t noticed at first.

 

“Yeah, maybe I do need some kind of vacation. Everything here has been hectic…”

 

Giles spoke up, having heard the conversation. “I think a vacation is an excellent idea for you. I heard what happened from Xander, so I understand if you need some time alone.”

 

“I don’t know if alone is the best idea…” Willow said, thinking about how easily she could give back into dark magic.

 

“I’ll go with her,” Buffy said, speaking up. “I could use a vacation too, this last year has been hell, more so than usual, and some girl time could really help us both. Besides, I finally have someone else who can cover for me in Sunnydale,” Buffy said, winking at Dawn, whose face lit up.

 

“You mean you’d let me… Oh thank you Buffy!” She hugged her sister, squeezing the breath out of the Slayer.

 

“Whoa there, don’t crush me. I don’t want to awaken another slayer just yet,” Buffy said, but she returned the hug to Dawn, careful not to squeeze too much.

 

Willow nodded, a soft smile on her lips. “I’ll set it up for after Tara’s…”

 

Buffy nodded, understanding Willow’s desire to not say anything yet. “We’ll take care of everything we need to before leaving, I understand.”

 

“Thank you,” Willow responded, allowing the rest of the room to converse while she thought about the one little victory, and what would come next.


End file.
